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Summer driving brings out safety initiatives for both parents and teenagers. The 100 days between Memorial Day and Labor day are considered the most dangerous for new, teenaged drivers. here's how parents and kids and survive them.

Summer brings driver safety initiatives for both parents and teenagers. The 100 days between Memorial Day and Labor day are considered the most dangerous for new teen drivers. Here's how parents and kids can survive them.

Failing to wear your seat belt could result in an encounter with a trooper driving one of these State Police vehicles this summer. Safety officials said inexperienced teen drivers also are at risk during the summer.
(Photo:
Staff Photo Larry Higgs
)

Summer’s here and the time is right for driving safely in the streets.

Bruce Springsteen won’t lose any sleep over my songwriting abilities, but the safety message is one that drivers will hear and see all summer — and with good reason. I thought about this as I drove south on the Parkway Friday afternoon, watching the behaviors that drive us nuts during the summer. At the least, they cause delays. At the very worst, they result in a crash.

Two safety campaigns are underway. Click It or Ticket, which raises awareness about seat-belt use and enforces the state’s laws. The other is “100 Deadliest Days,” a summer safety campaign aimed at teen drivers and their parents.

Click It Or Ticket, the annual federally funded campaign, started May 19. New Jersey is one of 11 states that launched the enforcement campaign, which features roving patrols and checkpoints seeking drivers and passengers who are not buckled up. As a reminder, New Jersey law requires everyone in the vehicle to be buckled up.

Buckling the seat belt is second nature for me. Seat belts are the reason I still have my front teeth.

Whether you love or hate them, seat belts save lives and prevent injury. I can tell you that firsthand. Decades ago, my old Ford was rear-ended in a three-vehicle accident in traffic stopped on Route 46 in Roxbury in Morris County. It was one of those accidents where I looked up in the rear-view mirror, saw a car heading toward me and knew it was going too fast to stop. Because my car was in the middle of the impending vehicular sandwich, there was nowhere to go.

Bam.

I walked away from that crash with no injuries because I was wearing a seat belt. That incident was more than enough to convince me.

This year, 184 police departments — 19 in Monmouth County and 11 in Ocean — received $4,000 grants to conduct seat belt road checks and have roving patrols.

The summer also is punctuated by other safe-driving initiatives including numerous drunken driving checkpoints and patrols. Pam Fischer, former state highway traffic safety director, emphasized that the 100 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day are a dangerous time for teen drivers because of their inexperience.

When I learned to drive, we had behind-the-wheel education. Because my birthday was in August, I spent the summer driving around the northwestern New Jersey countryside on the school district’s dime, honing my driving skills. My instructor said I would only become a good driver by driving a lot. Decades later, when I was learning to road race, my instructor echoed the same thing, only he called it seat time. And I put in two years of it before I was allowed to, or felt confident enough in my skills to, go fast on a race course.

Fischer echoes the same idea about practice. Under the state’s Graduated Driver’s License program, it’s up to parents to do what the instructors did for me, help with practice driving and make sure bad habits aren’t formed. She recommends that parents drive at least 30 minutes each week with their newly licensed teen. Parents should practice specific driving skills together and give their teens feedback about how to scan the road ahead to recognize and respond to a hazard before it becomes a near miss or crash.

Parents need to work with their teen on what my father used to call judgment — controlling speed, proper turning, braking and maintaining a safe following distance, Fischer said. My dad, a former Army paratrooper, used to bark orders while we were practicing, punctuated with a terse command to “pay attention” when he thought I was daydreaming. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience, but years and miles later, he absolutely was right.

It all paid off when I took my road test. But it still pays off each day I make my 100-mile, round-trip commute without incident.

Parents today have it a little more difficult than my dad did, because their job isn’t over when their teen gets a license. They need to continue to help their teen manage what Fischer calls the “highest risks,” such as night driving and driving with their friends. Fischer, who is the parent of a teenager going through the Graduated Driver’s License process, said it’s also up to parents to set in advance rules and punishments if those rules are broken.

Parents can find additional information at DriveitHOME.org, an online resource from the National Safety Council to help parents of young drivers, Fischer said.